People often make travel bookings according to a pre-determined set of rules, or according to their accustomed travel arrangements. However, certain types of bookings may often result in costly changes at the last minute. It may be that booking different types travel arrangements, for example, in a different travel class with no change penalty, may be a wiser choice for certain bookings, such as, for example, bookings for travel and accommodations for a convention or for a customer meeting that may often require last-minute changes.
What is clearly needed is a system, method and apparatus for tracking booking behavior patterns of travelers, and, based on historical aggregate data and internal and external events, for suggesting better booking methods for initial bookings, resulting in a lower average over-all cost.
Often people travel to the same destination or use the same accommodations repeatedly, and they may notice other people who also make the same trip or use the same accommodations repeatedly. However, there is no good way for a person to meet these other travelers and the person is also concerned about doing so without previously knowing something about the person or persons he would like to meet.
What is clearly needed is a system, method, and apparatus that allows unacquainted travelers who travel the same routes or use the same facilities or services, etc. to enter into a social network in a controlled manner.
Travel resources associated with certain events tend to become very scarce as the event approaches. For example, flights and hotel rooms to a large industry exposition tend to be booked weeks or even months ahead of time. In cases of annual events, these resources may be booked even years ahead of time.
What is clearly needed is a system and method that takes into consideration planning for such events and accordingly blocks and books reservations for customers based on their past travel patterns. In some cases the system could even go beyond that and book rooms for speculative “banking” of travel assets such as hotel rooms and flight capacity.